sibility. Something must therefore be allowed for
this effect likewise. Doubtless, the perfect purity of the Supreme Being
makes him see in us stains, far more in number and deeper in dye; than
we ourselves can discover. Nor should another awful consideration be
forgotten. When we look into ourselves, those sins only, into which we
have lately fallen, are commonly apt to excite any lively impression.
Many individual acts of vice, or a continued course of vicious or
dissipated conduct, which, when recent, may have smitten us with deep
remorse, after a few months or years leave but very faint traces in our
recollection; at least, those acts alone continue to strike us strongly,
which were of very extraordinary magnitude. But the strong impressions
which they at first excited, not the faded images which they
subsequently present to us, furnish the true measure of their guilt: and
to the pure eyes of God, this guilt must always have appeared far
greater than to us. Now to the Supreme Being we must believe that there
is no past or future; as whatever _will be_, so whatever _has been_, is
retained by him in present and unvarying contemplation, continuing
always to appear just the same as at the first moment of its happening.
Well may it then humble us in the sight of that Being "who is of purer
eyes than to behold iniquity;" to call to mind that, unless our offences
have been blotted out by our obtaining an interest in the satisfaction
of Christ, through true repentance and lively faith, we appear before
him clothed with the sins of our whole lives, in all their original
depth of colouring, and with all the aggravations which we no longer
particularly remember, but which, in general, we, perhaps, may recollect
to have once filled us with shame and confusion of face. The writer is
the rather desirous of enforcing this reflection; because he can truly
declare, that he has found no consideration so efficacious in producing
in his own mind the deepest self-abasement.

In treating of the sources of the erroneous estimates which we form of
our religious and moral character, it may not, perhaps, be without its
uses to take this occasion of pointing out some other common springs of
self-deception. Many persons, as was formerly hinted, are misled by the
favourable opinions entertained of them by others; many, it is to be
feared, mistake a hot zeal for orthodoxy, for a cordial acceptance of
the great truths of the Gospel; and almost all